Blumenthal camp aids group's attack on McMahon

Ed Stannard, New Haven Register

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, October 23, 2010

Staff members for state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's U.S. Senate campaign assisted Planned Parenthood when the agency asked for photos of women wrestlers in order to launch an attack on Linda McMahon, the campaign confirmed Friday.

While nonprofit and for-profit groups can spend money on campaigns, a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, they are not allowed to coordinate efforts on paid political advertisements.

Earlier this week, the state Democratic Party filed a complaint with the FEC charging coordinated campaign activity between McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment, run by her husband, Vince.

"It was just yesterday that the Blumenthal-funded state Democratic Party filed a frivolous complaint alleging coordination -- despite the fact that they had no evidence," said McMahon spokesman Ed Patru in an e-mail.

"Today, there is clear and incriminating evidence that Dick Blumenthal is not only engaged in potentially illegal coordination, but that he is a politician who will stop at nothing to hold onto power."

But according to Marc Elias, an elections lawyer working with the Blumenthal campaign, coordination between the campaign and Planned Parenthood is legal because it is intended only to be put on the Internet.

The FEC "essentially exempted the Internet from what we think of as the coordination rules," said Elias, a partner in the Perkins Coie law firm in Washington.

The rule enabled bloggers and others who may not fit under the news media's exemptions to discuss issues with campaigns that will end up on Twitter or elsewhere on the Web, Elias said.

"Organizations that do that will typically have a dividing line between folks that talk to campaigns and those that don't," he said. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Blumenthal in June.

Ty Matsdorf, a spokesman for the Blumenthal campaign, verified the e-mail that Patru distributed, which was sent by Marcy Stech to other campaign and Democratic staffers.

Under the subject, "Worst of WWE + women photos," the e-mail stated that Democratic consultant Andrew Grossman "is looking for mysoginistic photos of women and WWE. Planned Parenthood wants to hit LM hard on it. What do we got?"

The e-mail first appeared on the Politico blog.

Matsdorf said the underlying question is: "Why are groups like this so outraged? And the answer is this is the way she made her money."

Tait Sye of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Washington issued a statement saying Blumenthal "has been a strong and outspoken advocate for women and women's rights, and women in Connecticut know that he will stand up for them in the U.S. Senate. That is why the Planned Parenthood Action Fund supports his candidacy.

"On the other hand, Linda McMahon has no track record of supporting women's rights and she ran a business, which degraded and exploited women."